Lao Mu did not take any of the food she had finally managed to find. There was very little meat inside a lobster shell like that, so mermaids rarely bothered catching them. Usually, only the very young mermaid children would catch them to play with.
But Li Leyou seemed to like it. She looked as if she had never eaten anything before. Before trying anything, she would carefully take a tiny bite first, then make a face showing either surprise and satisfaction or complete dislike.
Lao Mu had only come to check whether she was still alive. After confirming that she was fine, he was ready to leave.
“You’re leaving again?”
“Do you need something?”
Li Leyou thought to herself that the young Lao Mu was truly a very aloof mermaid. Unlike him, she actually enjoyed talking to people, especially those she was familiar with.
There was no one else alive here for her to talk to, so she really wanted Lao Mu to stay a little longer.
“I want to talk to you,” Li Leyou said.
Lao Mu did not understand. “About what?”
“Nothing. I just want to chat. Don’t you usually talk to other mermaids? Your own people?” Li Leyou asked curiously.
“There’s nothing to talk about.” Lao Mu glanced at her before diving back into the water.
How cold.
He did not even want to say a few more words to her. Would these two really become lovers in the future?
With Lao Mu being this distant, how did they ever end up together?
“Wait, wait! I do have something to ask!” Li Leyou definitely did not want to let him leave so quickly. He had finally shown up, and now he was already trying to leave.
Lao Mu stopped and looked back at her with his greenish-blue eyes. Although his attitude was cold, there was an innocent, guileless look in his eyes.
“I want to ask you something. Have you ever seen another mermaid in the sea who looks like me?”
“No. I’ve only ever seen one mermaid with a tail like yours.” Lao Mu honestly added, “You’re the weakest mermaid I’ve ever seen.”
Li Leyou did not care.
She still thought of herself as a human being who had merely ended up with a fake fish tail. Of course she could not compare with a real mermaid. Besides, she was not planning to compete in some underwater sports tournament. What did she need all that strength for?
Still, she pretended to be offended.
“If you say things like that about me, I’ll get angry!”
Lao Mu did not believe her because she was not giving off the scent of someone who was angry.
“If you’ve never seen a mermaid who looks like me, then you’ve never met one with the same name as me either, right?” Li Leyou confirmed again.
Lao Mu nodded.
After getting her answer, Li Leyou thought smugly, Oh, so now you’re ignoring me and acting like you don’t care.
Just wait. A few hundred years from now, you’ll be the one holding me and crying your heart out.
When you finally fall in love with me, I’m definitely going to bring up the past and ask who it was that didn’t even want to talk to me when we first met. Hmph!
Looking at the young mermaid before her, who knew nothing about what the future held, Li Leyou secretly felt delighted and proud. She was even a little excited to see what would happen.
Lao Mu could not accurately describe the scent she was giving off, but it reminded him of the feeling he used to get when his younger brother was about to play a prank on him.
She was clearly up to no good.
Lao Mu did not like that feeling, so he stopped paying attention to Li Leyou and turned to leave.
Li Leyou followed him.
Her swimming speed had improved dramatically recently. Her progress was practically unbelievable. She had gone from mechanically moving her tail from side to side like one-two, one-two, to actually swaying it up and down.
“Don’t go! Why do you always leave whenever I say something? I want you to teach me the mermaid language too… Look, I don’t know how to speak mermaid, so I can’t communicate with the other mermaids. That means I’ll have no choice but to keep bothering you, right?”
Lao Mu did not shake her off, but he still refused to respond.
His long hair drifted through the seawater like seaweed. His tail clearly moved less frequently than hers, yet he swam much faster. There was an effortless, graceful beauty to his movements.
“Lao Mu, teach me some common mermaid phrases. I promise I won’t call for you anymore after that. How about it?”
“You refuse to teach me because you actually want me to keep calling you, right? Earlier, you even told me not to call for you, but secretly you wanted me to, didn’t you? I know.”
As expected, Lao Mu became angry.
At his age, he was terrible at hiding his emotions. He suddenly turned around and glared at her, his shoulders tensing.
Seeing this, Li Leyou did not back down. Instead, she became even more mischievous.
“I’ll call you in the morning, at noon, and at night. If I can’t catch any fish, I’ll call you. If a lobster grabs me with its claws, I’ll still call you!”
Lao Mu told her, “You can’t do that.”
Li Leyou almost burst out laughing, but she managed to hold it back. She knew she could not push him too far, so she changed her expression and put on a pitiful look.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Lao Mu, don’t be angry. I can’t help it. You’re the only person I know here. If you ignore me, I really won’t know what to do.”
She was being completely sincere.
Every day, she drifted around in the sea, and her heart felt like a little boat without a harbor. Only when she saw someone familiar could she finally relax a little.
Lao Mu’s shoulders loosened, and he unhappily flicked his tail.
He had been so angry just now that he almost wanted to smack her with his tail. But when she showed such genuine vulnerability and dependence on him, Lao Mu suddenly felt that perhaps he had been too harsh.
His brows furrowed deeply.
Should he agree or not?
Li Leyou waited in silence for so long that she began thinking to herself, If he refuses today, I’ll ask again tomorrow. Sooner or later, I’ll pester him until he agrees.
Lao Mu agreed much more quickly and easily than she expected. She did not even have to use her usual pestering tactics.
So young people really were too soft-hearted to refuse someone who kept asking.
His personality now was so different from the person he would become in the future. He must have gone through countless things to eventually turn into that cold, distant man.
“Yay! Then let’s start learning now!”
Li Leyou swam in front of Lao Mu and used both hands to draw a heart in the water as a gesture of thanks.
Lao Mu did not understand what she meant. He thought she was about to suddenly attack him and quickly backed away.
The mermaid language came naturally to mermaids. From the moment they were born, they could hear mermaids communicating throughout the ocean.
Growing up in such an environment, they did not need anyone to teach them how to use their voices.
Mermaids had no written language. Instead, they were accustomed to expressing happiness, asking for help, sadness, and other emotions through the tone and emotion of their voices.
It was only after Li Leyou began learning the mermaid language that she realized it was a language that required more talent than technique.
Phrases with six sounds or fewer were considered short sentences and expressed very simple meanings.
Li Leyou had Lao Mu teach her several phrases she considered essential, such as “Help!”, “The shore,” “Direction,” and “I’m hungry.”
More complicated phrases, those containing more than seven sounds, required the use of a special mermaid vocal organ to assist with pronunciation.
“The vocal organ you mentioned—where is it? How do I use it?”
Lao Mu extended a finger and lightly tapped the area from her neck to her jaw.
“Here? How do I make a sound? Ah! Ah! Ah-ah-ah?”
After listening to her random attempts, Lao Mu finally understood why he had never heard her communicating in the noisy ocean.
She simply did not know how.
The short phrase she used to call him might be the only piece of mermaid language she knew, and even then, she often pronounced it incorrectly.
It was strange.
But there were so many strange things about her that even a mermaid as lacking in curiosity as Lao Mu could not help being fascinated by her. He often wondered silently about where she had come from and what her past had been like.
Li Leyou suddenly remembered something.
“Then what does mo ye ka ha nie laomu mean? I know that the laomu at the end is your name. What about the part before it?”
“…”
Lao Mu refused to answer. He turned his head away.
“I’m going back.”
What?
Was it really that embarrassing?
The more he tried to hide it, the more curious she became.
But Lao Mu had already disappeared at an astonishing speed.
Li Leyou thought about it for a while and decided to conduct an experiment.
She could keep the beginning of the phrase the same and simply replace “Lao Mu” at the end with someone else’s name.
She did not know the names of any other mermaids, so she could only use Anla.
Soon, Li Leyou’s puzzled yet cheerful voice echoed through the ocean.
“Mo ye ka ha nie… Anla?”
At that moment, Anla was in a nearby part of the sea, chasing a shark with several friends from his group.
When he heard the call, he stopped in disbelief.
What is wrong with that wandering mermaid?
She bothered Lao Mu before, and now she’s switched to bothering me?
“Anla, do you have a mate? Is she calling you?” one of his friends asked.
Another quickly spoke up.
“No, wait! I recognize that voice. She called Lao Mu like that before!”
“Oh! Did the two of you choose the same mate?”
Anla exploded in frustration.
“Of course not! She’s a strange wandering mermaid who can’t speak mermaid language! That’s the only phrase she knows!”
Life among the mermaids was rather monotonous, especially for the younger ones. Quite a few mermaids had already heard that a wandering mermaid had appeared near the outer sea, and they had long been unable to contain their curiosity.
“Anla, no matter what, she’s calling you. Let’s go take a look.”
“I want to see her too.”
They abandoned the shark they had chased until it was practically dizzy and urged Anla to take them to the wandering mermaid.
Anla did not want to go.
However, there were also three female mermaids among them who were his older sisters and aunts.
They were usually extremely domineering within the group and would even steal his food. Anla did not want to be chased around and beaten by all three of them, so he had no choice but to unwillingly lead five or six curious mermaids to find Li Leyou.
Li Leyou had not expected that repeating her “magic spell” would actually summon several mermaids this time.
She was perfectly comfortable around people she knew. The more familiar she was with someone, the more relaxed she became.
But around strangers, she was somewhat reserved.
Her mother had often scolded her for being the type who was only bold at home.
“Oh my, look! Her tail is golden!”
“It’s sparkling!”
The three female mermaids immediately rushed over and surrounded Li Leyou.
Li Leyou had already seen how beautiful the mermaid race was, but even so, suddenly being surrounded by three gorgeous, water-bright beauties still made her feel a little dizzy.
And unlike the little mermaids, who wore seashells for coverage, these three were completely natural and unbothered, swimming around right in front of her without the slightest embarrassment.
At that moment, Li Leyou was no longer the shameless flirt who had teased Lao Mu.
Instead, she became incredibly embarrassed, not even knowing where she should look.
She was a girl from the south. When had she ever encountered a situation like this?
The three female mermaids stared at her tail with sparkling eyes and chattered excitedly at her in a language she could not understand. Their voices were beautiful, almost like singing.
They even reached out to touch her tail, leaving Li Leyou completely overwhelmed.
She finally understood why Lao Mu had reacted so strongly when she grabbed his tail before.
Touching her own tail felt perfectly normal, but having someone else touch it was an extremely strange sensation.
“I’ve never seen a tail this color before. But why isn’t her hair golden too?”
“Can you really not speak? Can you understand what we’re saying?”
“She’s so small. She looks like a mermaid who hasn’t even reached adulthood yet… Poor thing. Is she this thin because she hasn’t had enough to eat?”
“Why don’t we take her hunting with us and give her some food?”
Before Li Leyou could even react, two of the female mermaids took hold of her and led her deeper into the ocean.
Li Leyou looked back at the distant shore, which finally helped her regain some clarity.
“Where are you taking me?”
The mermaid holding her hand turned around and smiled at her.
After another completely unsuccessful attempt at communication, Li Leyou thought to herself:
Well, they seem so friendly and enthusiastic. They probably aren’t bad mermaids, right?
She pushed her faint worries aside and chose to trust her beautiful new friends.